09/12/2011

Considering the hodgepodge of characters celebrating the fact that Sonic is one year away from boozing it up in America, it’s natural that the series original the character with a darker, edgier tone joins Metal Sonic in crashing the festivities.

Sega officially revealed the long-known fact that Shadow will be out to thwart his goody blue counterpart, bringing with him a new slightly edgier look in small details, such as paint stripped off from his hover skates, and some more jagged lines across some of his red stripes. A subtle way to tell the player that he’s not here to emo up a party or play support character; he’s here to kill Sonic.

With Metal Sonic and Shadow now officially revealed, it’s only a matter of time before the time traveler with psychokinesis crashes the party and sends Sonic into space.

So, I was walking around Target the other night, and I couldn’t help but notice one of Atgames‘ many officially-licensed Genesis plug-and-play systems, the Arcade Blast Sonic, was on the shelf. Since I was pretty bored, I picked it up to take a look at it.

That’s when I saw something a little…weird.

Why, I’ve never seen a Sonic the Hedgehog 2 title screen drawn that way on a Sega product–even that shirt which was licensed a few years back didn’t quite have the artwork like that. Wait, could it…? No, of course not.

Then I flipped the box over.

Huh. It’s there again, too! Every other game on the box uses the standard title screen, but this is using that art instead. You know, if I didn’t know any better, I would say that wasn’t official artwork.

Of course, gentle readers, we know better. It’s not.

It’s actually a very old Sonic 2 HD title screen that was replaced, but its legacy lives on in Atgames packaging. Certainly, this isn’t the first time fan works have appeared in official products (the Sonia fanart in All-Stars Racing comes to mind), but it doesn’t make me smile any less each time it happens.